Peter Clark (historian)

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Peter Alan Clark (born 24 May 1944) is a British historian. From 2000 to 2011 he was professor of European urban history at the University of Helsinki, and he retired in 2011.

Clark studied at Balliol College, Oxford, and earned a first‑class degree in Modern History in 1966. He began as a research fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, and then moved to the University of Leicester, where he was lecturer, reader, and later professor of economic and social history. From 1985 to 1999 he was the first director of Leicester’s Centre for Urban History.

In 1989 he co‑founded the European Association for Urban History with Bernard Lepetit and Herman Diederiks, and served as its treasurer until 2010. He was Secretary of the International Commission for the History of Towns from 1993 to 1995. He contributed to various publications, including the Cambridge Urban History of Britain.

Clark is a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, where he was on the Council from 1991 to 1995. He was elected to the Academia Europaea in 2011 and to the Royal Belgian Academy (Flemish) in 2015. Stockholm University awarded him an Honorary Degree of Philosophy in 2012.